Chapter 2 Spirit cores

Next to him was lying a mutilated creature, everything was covered in blood and he felt the pain coming from all parts of his body.

“This is how the hell probably looks like. Maybe I am dead and this is some kind of purgatory? ” said out loud Leshy in order to break the deadly silence of the place. He took a glance and at the powerless body of the creature.

“ In purgatory, you probably can’t die and this thing is definitely dead…so where am I?” thought Leshy. After short observation, the creatures turn out to be green, quite slim yet very wiry.

It looked like goblins from fantasy games - it was very ugly, with short, bony temple scales instead of eyebrows and crude as if made of stone facial features.

It had twice the human size nose which would look comical if not for the overall dangerous feeling his body gave as a whole.

Leshy had to admit that the creature was also much more human-like then it is usually presented in western fantasy - its clothes were neat, it was cleaned as it used to take baths often and there seemed to be wisdom hidden behind wrinkles on its face.

At that observation, a chill run through Leshy's body and complex feeling about killing it rose in his heart.

“It’s not that I had any choice, had I?” muttered quietly Leshy, appreciating the simple fact of being alive.

While contemplating the body, Leshy also realized that the feeling of danger that was haunted him had disappeared completely. It made him wonder whether he got some danger detecting ability but there was no way to confirm it now so he put that thought at the back of his head.

However the constant warnings it gave him he could calm his mind and think about what next.

“I need to do something with the wound and stop the bleeding. In action movies there were always two ways to stop the flow of blood - either you sew the wound or burn with hot iron…” thought Leshy.

He had no experience in treating any injury as serious as this so any idea was better than none.

“I am afraid that closing wounds with a hot iron is a rather painful operation. At least it makes the main characters in movies to always scream” he said bitterly and moved to the kitchen to start the fire.

Using a fire starter and wood from kitchen supplies he quickly managed to create enough heat for the smoke to appear. After blowing for a few seconds, flames started to emerge.

Lesh added more wood then put a dagger in the fire and left the whole thing to become hot.

Due to blood loss and wind coming to the kitchen from outside he felt cold. He woke up, wearing just boxers and there was no time before to find something warmer.

With no small effort, he moved to the bedroom and started reviewing his surroundings. In the corner of the room where the wardrobe used to be there were two baskets. First of them were made of linen with few random rags mixed in it. He tightened those rags around his waist to reinforce a temporal dressing for his wound.

In the second basket, there was a nice looking leather set made of jacket, trousers, shoes, and belt. That was exactly something he hoped to find.

The leather seemed very sturdy and of excellent quality. Also, the whole set fits Leshy’s size excellently so without much thought he put it on.

“Well, this time the exchange rate for my stuff was much fairer. This leather suit is actually quite excellent” said weakly but happily Leshy. The leather suit did not constrain his moves but provided a sense of having reliable armor and protection from coldness.

“The dagger should be already hot, so let’s do what must be done and close the wound first” Leshy walked to the fireplace, took a deep breath and picked up the dagger. The blade was hot as a frying pan, before putting steak on it.

If not for the fear that without burning the wound he will bleed to death, he would never come close to blade as hot as this one. Leshy was always a reasonable person that followed logic and common sense but even then there was hesitation in his eyes when he held a dagger.

“One, two, three… aaarg, krvaaa” yelled Leshy when dagger made a sizzling sound upon touching flesh. Leshy felt on the ground exhausted and wet due to intense pain. The smell of own fried meat made him dizzy and nauseous.

Fortunately, the operation was successful and the wound, even though still ugly, was closed giving Leshy a mental relief. The operation, however, did not lessen the pain, on the contrary, it got to a level when it was barely endurable.

“In movies once the main star closes wound everything is perfectly fine. It obviously fails to mention the constant pain after the ‘treatment’ ” said Leshy, his lips were still pale and he was slightly trembling all over the body.

He picked the canteen with water from the kitchen shelf and took a few long sips. Then he started treated the wound - in a place where he used to keep med-kit there was some herbal balsam and without much thinking, Leshy applied them on the wound. Next, he wrapped everything neatly in a bandage and when the wound was no longer exposed, the pain significantly lessened.

“If this was a dream I would definitely wake up after sustaining this much of pain. I need to grow custom to the thought that whenever I am it is my new reality” thought Leshy “ I wish I knew where my Vanessa is and why she was not transferred with me” thought Leshy.

“Well, she wakes up much earlier than me so she probably went to work already, which is about 1 km to the north-east. Once I recover some of my strength I need to go there” planned Leshy.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

After resting for a while he stood up and decided to clean all the mess that was created after the fight.

He walked to dead bodies of goblin-like creatures and start searching their pockets and holding bags. Besides spear, there was also a machete, telescope with strange runes that looked as if made of silver, a canteen of fresh water, some bandages with ointment and two same scrolls with an illustration that looked like breathing exercises.

“In none of the fantasy I’ve read, there was anything about goblins and yoga. This world is getting stranger by seconds” thought Leshy while reviewing the scrolls and putting them into one of the bags of holdings.

“I will need to study those scrolls later on” planned Leshy when he attached holding the bag to his belt. He walked to dead bodies in order to clean them and threw them off the mountain. There was a strong stench of blood and sweat coming from bodies, which made him get rid of them sooner rather than later.

When he picked up the dead goblin with a cracked head something very strange and rounded dropped from inside of the skull. It was a little bit fluorescing and Leshy could feel some strange, unidentified waves coming from it. Those waves very gentle not made by neither air nor heat but could be felt nerveless on a completely different level.

“Now that’s interesting, I guess checking that out has a priority than cleaning… actually everything is better than cleaning” quickly decided Leshy as he dropped the dead body back on the floor and picked the strange stone.

It had barely noticeable red glow but it was neither cold nor warm and touching it gave quite a nice feeling. Leshy sniffed the stone and his mind becomes strangely clearer and more refreshed. His body instinctively craved to eat it but Leshy quickly crushed that feeling.

“Maybe the other goblin also had a stone like this? It does look rather precious and it would be a shame to miss a second one” thought Leshy

“ The first stone seemed to come from the goblin’s skull. I wonder if this is a rule” there was an expression of an evil scientist when he said that.

He pulled up the butcher knife in order to confirm his theory. Everything including himself was already covert in blood so the idea of cracking open another skull did not seem as strange as it sounds.

With few swift upright chops, similar to those when you cut lumber, Leshy opened the second's goblin skull. It didn't take long before he was able to find another stone, this time it had a greenish glow but gave the same great feeling like the red one.

He put both of them in the bag than resumed cleaning. He threw away bodies and moped blood using rags and some of the worse looking linen clothes then cleaned himself using water from a canteen.

“I think I moved too much - the wound in my side started to hurt much more than before,” he said, little angry at himself.

Slightly tired and in pain he sat down leaning his back to the wall and reached to bag in order to pick up those strange stones that were in goblin’s skulls. The amazing feeling he got while holding them, made him feel that those stones are supernatural and he wanted to reveal their secrets.

He probed them a by shaking, smelling, doing whatever test he could imagine in order to understand their use. After a thoughtful moment he very carefully licked it ready to spit in case it started burning his tongue but to his surprise, a warm and pleasant feeling flout throughout his body instead.

“I should probably not eat it, but I have a feeling that it tastes wonderful. In the end, humans eat animals, so maybe goblins can be treated as the food here?” he hesitated and voiced his doubts

“Oh well, there is old Slavic saying - you can't screw up the whole world. That saying encourages us to try everything because, in the big picture, the result can’t be too disastrous. Can’t they?” said Leshy out loud trying to justify his action of eating the strange stone.

The temptation proved to be too great and short after the stone ended in Leshy’s mouth. The stone immediately started to melt, giving an extremely strange sensation. The feeling was similar to when you eat a popping sweet dust for children, but this time the sensation did not end in the mouth but slowly went thought the rest of the body.

After a while, Leshy felt as if electricity or some other kind of energy started to flow to his stomach sending an unpleasant feeling throughout his body. He subconsciously closed his eyes trying not to faint and to focus his thought on bizarre sensation he was experiencing. He could almost see a small dots of light appearing behind his closed eyelid but when he opened his eyes nothing was there.

The feeling, however, was becoming more painful and hot. Now it felt as if a liquid fire was circulating in his stomach. Leshy’s body was also becoming hotter and hotter, even started to twitch irregularly due to growing pain.

A small stream of blood began very slowly coming from the corner of his mouth. Leshy got scared and tried not to panic but he couldn't even move as all of his muscles were not responding. He tried to focus on taking big breaths of air and slowly releasing them to regain control over his body but with no results.

Suddenly under his lids, he saw a bright flash of blue light. It appeared fast like lighting and equally quickly disappeared. After the first appearance of light, it started to pop more and more frequently. Ignoring the growing hotness of his body he maintained closed eyes focusing on those popping up flashes.